SNEAK PEAK PREVIEW: Into the Mist
by LilithiaRW
Summary: Sakura is a legendary shinobi from the Village Hidden in the Mist. As the Third Shinobi War reaches its peak, through astonishing circumstances, the Kage of the Mist decides to offer an alliance with Konohagakure. Sakura and her team are sent as bodyguards to the Kumo ambassador to the Leaf Village. The last thing Sakura expects is to create bonds and find friendship within Konoha.
1. Chapter 1

**PLEASE READ!**

**So this is a sneak peak of my new story coming out. I'll probably release it either this December or when I finally finish TFoK. What you are about to read will be Sakura's background story.**

**This will be the most thought-out and planned story I have ever written. I'm kinda daunted, because I have the feeling that it will evolve into a monster haha. Anyway, in addition to releasing this new story, I hope to release my notes for the story, once it is finished anyway. I'm really excited ^_^**

_A messenger had arrived for Sakura's father from the Mizukage. The man was asked to wait in her father's office while during a meeting with the clan elders. The man excused himself to the bathroom, one of the Hozuki branch members leading him to the restroom. Walking down the corridor, the man heard some of the clan kids laughing softly, and saw three of the kids laughing in one of the rooms he passed, the door was open._

"_Hey, Sak, can you freeze it?"_

_The man froze._

"_Of course not, baka." A little girl voice snapped. "You know my mommy doesn't like me using it unless she is in the room!"_

_The messenger quickened his pace to keep up with his guide. After using the bathroom, the branch member guided the messenger back to the office. However the man slowed down as he passed the room with the children in it._

"_Fine but don't tell!" the little girl's voice whispered conspiratorially. Her other two companions giggled excitedly._

_Glancing in, the two boys eyes were widened as they stared at the little girl's hands. The messenger stopped walking to stare through the doorway as the little girl held a flower of ice in her hands. One of the boys reached out to touch the icy petals, and it suddenly turned to ice and splashed him in the face._

"_Sakura!" the boy protested, wiping his face as the other boy and the girl giggled._

_The messenger stared at the little girl with pink hair and green eyes, dressed in a small kimono that told him that she was probably part of the main branch of the Hozuki. His eyes narrowed. That is, if that girl was from the Hozuki clan at all. If there really were surviving Yuki members… The man looked up and saw his guide nearing the end of the hall. With one last glance at the ignorant children, the man flash stepped to appoint down the hall, just in time for his guide to glance at him and tell him to take a right and the head of Hozuki's office was the last door at the end of the hall._

_Later that night, a team of assassins slipped through the Hozuki security. Their orders were to find the rumored Yuki clan survivors. Intel had told them to look for a young girl with pink hair and green eyes. Keeping to the shadows and light on their feet, chakra signatures hidden, they snuck through the sleeping household, squinting through the cracks in the door hinges to look for any sign of color._

_One door still had a faint light flickering behind it, from a candle no doubt. The four assassins listened in._

_Slap! A girl whimpered._

"_Churiko told me what you did today!" an older female voice hissed. "Did you not think that maybe Akiyo would tell his mother the little trick you pulled today?!"_

_A little girl's sniffling could be heard._

"_How many times do I have to tell you?!" the woman seethed. "Every time you use that you put us all in danger! Not just you and me, but the rest of our clans!"_

"_I'm –hic- sorry…" a small voice whispered._

"_Sorry won't cut it." The woman snarled, keeping her voice low. "There was a guest in the house. Do you know how dangerous that is? We do our best keeping you away from the village, away from the outside, but we can't protect you if you won't listen!"_

_That was all the assassins needed to hear. Dropping silently from the ceiling, they barged into the door, not saying a word. One of them attempted to cast genjutsu, though Sakura's mother dispelled the one meant to immobilize her and her daughter as soon as she felt it. The other was a layered genjutsu around the room to silence any sounds from the outside, so that no one else in the house would hear the battle._

_A slim woman, mid-thirties, with long dark red hair turned around, sensing the foreign chakra, and gasped at the sight of four bodies rushing her. She pushed a little girl with pink hair behind her, a short sword appearing from the fold of her kimono as she blocked a kunai aimed at her neck._

_Clang!_

_Sakura scrambled back, eyes wide, as her mother ripped off the layers of her kimono, revealing nin pants and a black shirt underneath. The little girl had never seen her mother in such a revealing outfit._

_The dark, ruby-haired woman slid the sword underneath the kunai and broke the shinobi's guard, pushing him back as another masked ninja attempted to sweep past her, aiming at Sakura._

"_Not my daughter!" Sakura's mother snarled, holding out her left hand and crunching it into a fist, using her right arm to block an attack from a third shinobi. At that very moment, Sakura felt a shift in her mother's chakra signature, as it seemed to grow more threatening. The man that had been running at Sakura, tanto lifted to slice down, froze where he was, a thick layer of ice paralyzing his body._

_Sakura stared up in horror as the man before her froze form the inside out._

"_Rrrrgh!" Three attackers yelled and focused on Sakura's mother. The woman gracefully evaded their attacks, although one man's tanto chopped off a large portion of her mother's dark hair. Her mother ignored this as one man summoned began a sequence of hand signals she seemed to recognize. Sakura's mother called up a wall of ice as the man spat opened his mouth and a large column of fire erupted._

_While she was distracted with that one of the attackers leapt around her wall and came at her from her right diagonal. Sakura's mother crouched and slid her body around in one movement, looking as if it were a choreographed dance move. The man flew over his mark while his teammate leapt through the hole burned in the ice. In a swift move Sakura's mother stabbed upwards as she spun back up and sliced the man in the air with her sword while her other hand sliced his teammate with a sword of ice that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The latter hit the floor hard and didn't move._

_The first man landed and used his momentum to come at her mother again, while the fourth attacker shot through the hole made in the wall of ice straight at Sakura. It seemed like slow motion to Sakura as the fourth man's hand reached out to grab her hair, Sakura flinching back, screaming, and holding her hands up in a pathetic attempt to stop him._

"_Aaaaaah!" the man's yowl of pain made Sakura open her eyes to stare as her attacker reeled back, the arm that had been about to grab her was now frozen solid, spikes of hard ice sticking out gruesomely from his forearm._

_Meanwhile her mother had been busy fighting close range with the other assassin. The room was too small for ninjutsu, and whenever the assassins attempted to cast a genjutsu her mother would dispel it before it was even completed. Sakura's mother was at a disadvantage here- there was not enough room for her to use the__ Makyō Hyōshō (Crystal Ice Mirrors) technique.__ Her mother and her attacker were left to fighting with weapons, the mask man charging sending jolts of electricity down his blade while Sakura's mother discarded her metal sword in favor of her ice sword._

_Sakura's attacker turned to her mother, his eyes glaring at her through his mask as he assumed it was the mother that had destroyed his arm._

_Suddenly Sakura's mother was facing off both men, their moves too fast for Sakura's eyes to see. She pressed herself into the corner of the room, watching in horror as her mother faced the two men._

"_Kya!" One of the men hit her mother with an open-palm strike, his hand glowing green. Her mother keeled over coughing up blood, the second attacker's swipe to her head barely missing her crown, but at the same time the first attacker shot his knee up and slammed it into her mother's face._

"_Okaa!" Sakura cried as she watched her mother stumbled back against the wall, her nose crushed and trails of blood running down her mouth, chin, and onto her shirt. Her mother placed a hand on her side, where bloodstains began to grow on her shirt from the medical jutsu attacks._

_The second attacker swung at her mother again; this time she was too slow. Sakura's mother cried out as the man's tanto bit into her shoulder, cracking her collarbone. Sakura whimpered, pressing her tight fists to her mouth._

_Sakura's mother glared up with her black eyes, and suddenly she raised her sword arm, twitching her fingers as her chakra invaded the man's pores, sinking into his blood. Her mother leaped out of the way of the first attacker, placing the second attacker between her and him._

"_Secret Technique: Ketsueki surēbu ." She hissed, her voice dropping until Sakura barely recognized the voice, so cold and unfeeling, hissing like wind on the tundra. The temperature in the room dropped to freezing as her mother's choppy blood-red hair floated around her, her eyes darkening blacker than black._

_Sakura stared as her mother began to twitch her fingers, controlling the assassin with the injured arm like a puppet. The man made grunts as if trying to resist her control, but soon enough both attackers were fighting against each other as Sakura's mother leaned against the wall, holding her bleeding torso as if that would keep her together._

_Sakura found her mother watching her with those unfamiliar black eyes. "M-Mommy?" she whispered._

_Her mother turned her gaze back to the two battling assassins as the one she was controlling with her Blood Slave technique was finally hacked to pieces by his teammate. Now there was only one left. Sakura stared into the porcelain mask, so inhuman to her young eyes. He raised his hands, fingers flying as his chakra levels rose and the room heated up._

"_Sakura get down!" her mother gasped._

"_Element Technique: Taifū moeru!" the man called as flames ignited around his body, growing larger and hotter._

_Sakura's mother flung herself at her daughter, covering the child with her body as the flames burst outwards and swirled further and higher until the entire room was engulfed in the storm of fire. The screams of her mother jarred Sakura's ears, and the smell of burning flesh quickly overwhelmed them. Sakura sobbed into her mother's chest, her lungs constricting with the heat and her body drenched in sweat._

"_I'm sorry, Sakura…" her mother whispered, blood spilling from her lips. Sakura gasped as her mother's body went limp, the full weight of the woman pressing Sakura into the hard wood floor. Her mother's body covered her fully, but Sakura could feel the tug of the fire storm's winds buffeting the dead weight. She couldn't breathe, but she didn't dare crawl out from under the body. Tears streamed down her eyes as the stench of charred flesh assaulted her senses._

_After what seemed like forever, the movement beyond her mother's body ceased. Sakura stayed still, for fear of the man that had released the devastating technique. She wasn't given the option, though, when suddenly her mother's body was ripped off of her._

"_There you are!" The remaining assassin snarled, reaching down to grab the little girl._

_Sakura screeched as the scary mask painted with red swirls and tiny eye slits filled her vision. His large hand clamped down on her arm, bruising her in his hold. Sakura sobbed, begging him to let her go, he was hurting her!_

_The man threw her across the room, her little body flying high and hitting the wall, then bouncing off to hit the floor. She struggled to get up, but the man was already standing over her, his boot slamming into her chest and pinning her against the wall._

"_Your mother was a fool." The man said in an emotionless voice. He reached behind him to pull out another sword, its blade glinting silver, cold and unmerciful._

_Sakura trembled, staring at her mother's body. The back was completely unrecognizable, burned almost halfway through. She could see the white and brown of charred bone, the dark red of melted, burnt flesh, squishy-looking innards, and the ashes of what was once her mother's beautiful long mane of dark red hair. Sakura's gut twisted in horror of what she saw._

_She looked up and saw the blade swing down at her._

"_TOU-SAAAAAN!" She screamed, desperately wishing to just melt into the floor._

"_Wh-What?" the assassin whispered as the little girl suddenly turned to water, the puddle slipping away towards the body of the woman. The assassin re-assessed the strength of the genjutsu surrounding the room to prevent disturbing the rest of the clan. He curse; the genjutsu was fraying from his giant fire technique. He had to kill that little girl soon if he wanted to get out alive. Already a couple of the clan members were moving about._

"_Solidify, dammit." He muttered._

_Sakura didn't know how long she could hold her liquid shape, but it was already straining her chakra to do so. With a gasp, she released the technique, solidifying. Panicking, she looked up to see the assassin running at her._

"_KAI!" a man outside the door shouted, dispelling the genjutsu. Sakura nearly fainted with relief when her father charged in, intercepting the assassin._

_The fight between Sakura's father and the assassin did not last long, seeing as the man was already exhausted from fighting her mother. Sakura's father quickly disabled the man just as the clan guards rushed in._

"_Take him to the east wing! I'll make sure he pays ten-times over for what he has done!" her father barked as the guards hauled up the unconscious body. "You good-for-nothing guards! How did this happen? They should not have passed those walls!"_

_One of the guards opened his mouth to protest._

"_Don't you dare answer that!" her father snarled. "Out of my sight, all of you!"_

_The branch members scrambled to leave the room, knowing how dangerous Sakura's father was when he was in an out-of-control emotional state. He turned to look at the remains of his wife._

"_Harumi…" he sobbed, reaching out to touch the body, but hesitating as his hand hovered over her. He pulled the body to him, turning Sakura's mother over to look at her face. "I'm so sorry… I should have sensed the genjutsu…"_

_The front half of the body was all that was intact. The torso was bleeding heavily, both externally and internally, not that it mattered anymore. Harumi's eyes were distant, glassy, black. Blood spilled from her mouth, coating her cheeks, chin, neck, chest. Red everywhere._

_Sakura was trembling in fear and exhaustion as she crawled over to her mother's body. Falling back against the wall beside it, Sakura slid down and sat, staring. Just staring. The sight of her mother's remains ingrained itself into her mind forever, remaining even when she closed her eyes. All that was left of her mother- melted flesh and charred bone._

_Her mother's face. Red. Everywhere. Sakura held up her hands, staring at the red blood covering them, covering her body, staining her clothes, in her hair…. Red, red, red, red, red, red, red!_

_She couldn't breathe. Sakura gasped for air, hyperventilating silently, staring at the awful mess of her mother's body. She leaned over and retched, the vomit burning her throat._

_Warm arms encircled her and picked her up. Sakura grabbed her father's shirt and screamed, curling herself in his arms. "Shhhh…" he murmured in her ear._

**REVIEW!**


	2. Author's Note

_**NO STOP COME BACK PLEASE READ**_

So I know that for many of you this alert got your hopes up. And I am truly sorry for that (I hate when my favorite authors do that too!). But please listen to me.

I have updated my Bio Page.

On there is a _**letter to all of you** _(each and every treasured reader)

_**Please go read it**_ (it is under the updating progress section)**  
**

I love all of you.

Thank you all so much for all the support and interest.

This is not goodbye.

I'll be back...


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